Biography

Hardcover. New York, Scribner, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 287 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Black and white pictures in center. Clean, tight copy with light edgewear to cover boards.

Hardcover. Washington DC, Shoemaker & Hoard, 1st, 2004, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, gray boards with blue cloth spine, 150 pages, b&w illustrations. A singular life often circles around a singular moment, an occasion when one's life in the world is defined forever and the emotional vocabulary set. For the extraordinary writer James Salter, this moment was contained in the fighter planes over Korea where, during his young manhood, he flew more than one hundred missions. James Salter is considered one of America's greatest prose stylists. The Arm of Flesh (later revised and retitled Cassada ) and his first novel, The Hunters, are legendary in military circles for their descriptions of flying and aerial combat. A former Air Force pilot who flew F-86 fighters in Korea, Salter writes with matchless insight about the terror and exhilaration of the pilot's life. This book collects passages from two other books he wrote about his military flight career and entries from his personal journal kept during his tours of military flying duty through flight training in late WWII, into combat duty in Korea in 1952, and through his post war flying up into the early 1960s. Masterfully edited by Jessica and William Benton, it has been organized chronologically and simply is wonderful. You can read from the journal entry, and then it is followed by fiction he created using that experience. No dust jacket, clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. Kansas City MO, Andrews McMeel Publishing, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. A portrait of one of the world's most famous boxers chronicles the life and career of Oscar de la Hoya, from his poverty-stricken childhood, to his Olympic glory, to his celebrity world of multimillion-dollar contracts, spicy romances, and turbulent personal life and professional career. 313 pages, b&w illustrations. Clean.

Hardcover. New York, Ammo, 1st, 2007, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 240 pages, many b&w and color photographs. A visual biography accompanied by excerpts from Thompson's work. Introduction by Johnny Depp, edited by Steve Crist and Paul Norton. Illustrated boards, no dust jacket issued.

Hardcover. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Company , 1st, 1973, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 297 pages, b&w photos. Light shelf-wear and rubbing to dust jacket with slight tear to center of rear flap. Nice reading copy.

Hardcover. New York, Knopf, 1st US, 1968, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 398 pages. Illustrated with 24 pages of black & white photographs. Light foxing to page fore edges. Light wear to price clipped dust jacket. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, Columbia University Press, 1st, 1992, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 321 pages with an index. Gore Vidal, known for such best-sellers as The City and the Pillar, Burr, Lincoln, and Myra Breckinridge, is a household name. The controversial Vidal ran for Congress in 1960, and set sparks flying with his public debates challenging William F. Buckley and Norman Mailer. Although one of America's most admired and prolific writers, Vidal has been steadfastly ignored or impugned by many critics. This is partly owing to the vast scope of his writings, which include more than twenty novels, half a dozen plays, dozens of screenplays, countless essays and book reviews, political commentary, and short stories; how do the critics approach such a writer? There has also been backlash against Vidal, whose radical polemics and undisguised contempt for those whom he has called "the hacks and hicks of academe" have hardly endeared him to the critical establishment. Gore Vidal: Writer Against the Grain is the first collection of critical essays to approach this important American writer in an attempt to rectify the unwarranted underestimation of his work. Jay Parini has drawn from the best of previously published criticism and commissioned fresh articles by leading contemporary critics to construct a comprehensive portrait of Vidal's multifaceted and memorable career. Writers as diverse as Harold Bloom, Stephen Spender, Catharine R. Stimpson, Richard Poirier, and Italo Calvino examine Vidal's work in their own highly individual ways, and each finds a different Vidal to celebrate, chide, recollect, or view close up. Also included is a recent interview with Parini in which Vidal discusses his career and his troubled relationship with the reviewers. The Vidal that finally emerges from these essays is a writer of undeniable weight and importance. Clean copy.

Hardcover. New York, Random House, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 454 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. A very clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket edges. A tight copy.

Hardcover. Boston, David R. Godine, 1st, 1985, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 49 pages, Hardcover with dust jacket. Includes b&w photos. Clean, tight copy. Spine lightly sunned.

Hardcover. Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 276 pages, b&w illustrations. Few people have had as profound an impact on the history of New York City as William J. Wilgus. As chief engineer of the New York Central Railroad, Wilgus conceived the Grand Central Terminal, the city's magnificent monument to America's Railway Age. Kurt C. Schlichting here examines the remarkable career of this innovator, revealing how his tireless work moving people and goods over and under Manhattan Island's surrounding waterways forever changed New York's bustling transportation system. After his herculean efforts on behalf of Grand Central, the most complicated construction project in New York's history, Wilgus turned to solving the city's transportation quandary: Manhattan - the financial, commercial, and cultural hub of the United States in the twentieth century - was separated from the mainland by two major rivers to the west and east, a deep-water estuary to the south, and the Harlem River to the north. Wilgus believed that railroads and mass transportation provided the answer to New York City's complicated geography. His ingenious ideas included a freight subway linking rail facilities in New Jersey with manufacturers and shippers in Manhattan, a freight and passenger tunnel connecting Staten Island and Brooklyn, and a belt railway interconnecting sixteen private railroads serving the metropolitan area.

Hardcover. NY, Harper, 1st, 2012, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 376 pages. Light scratch top rear cover, else a clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket.

Hardcover. Hartford CT, J. B. Burr & Company, 1st, 1868, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover in polished calf, black spine label with gilt lettering. Frontis portrait of Grant, additional full page engravings, 631 pages plus publisher's ads. Both cover hinges cracked but holding, and text block is solid. No foxing in text.

Hardcover. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 4th, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 402 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Remainder mark on bottom of page block. Otherwise, clean, tight copy with minor wear to edges.

Hardcover. Boston, MA, Da Capo Press, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 288 pages. Hardcover. Dust jacket unclipped. Gilt title on spine. B/w illustrations throughout. In excellent condition, binding tight, clean and unmarked inside and out. Looks barely read.

Hardcover. NY, Hawthorn Books, 1st, 1973, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a worn, lightly soiled dust jacket, 243 pages. Name on front fly leaf, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. New York, Tim Duggan Books, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 248 pages, b&w illustrations. The first great portrait photographer, a pioneering balloonist, the first person to take an aerial photograph, and the prime mover behind the first airmail service, Nadar was one of the original celebrity artist-entrepreneurs. A kind of 19th-century Andy Warhol, he knew everyone worth knowing and photographed them all, conferring on posterity psychologically compelling portraits of Manet, Sarah Bernhardt, Delacroix, Daumier and countless others--a priceless panorama of Parisian celebrity. Born Gaspard-Felix Tournachon, he adopted the pseudonym Nadar as a young bohemian, when he was a budding writer and cartoonist. Later he affixed the name Nadar to the facade of his opulent photographic studio in giant script, the illuminated letters ten feet tall, the whole sign fifty feet long, a garish red beacon on the boulevard. Nadar became known to all of Europe and even across the Atlantic when he launched "The Giant," a gas balloon the size of a twelve-story building, the largest of its time. With his daring exploits aboard his humongous balloon (including a catastrophic crash that made headlines around the world), he gave his friend Jules Verne the model for one of his most dynamic heroes.

Hardcover. Worcester, MA, Clark Jillson, 1st, 1894, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, green cloth. 244 pages. Illustrated frontispeice. Illustrated chapter headings. B&w illustrations throughout. Gilt titles on spine. Foxing throughout, otherwise clean tight copy.

Softcover. New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1st, 2000, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 137 pages, light blue wrappers. An uncorrected proof. The subtle portrait of a great but difficult man and a legendary island. When friends die, one's own credentials change: one becomes a survivor. Graham Greene has already had biographers, one of whom has served him mightily. Yet I hope that there is room for the remembrance of a friend who knew him-not wisely, perhaps, but fairly well-on an island that was "not his kind of place," but where he came season after season, year after year; and where he, too, will be subsumed into the capacious story.

Hardcover. Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, 1st, 1980, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket. With the '1' in a full number line. The definitive biography of this noted anthropologist, with an excellent bibliography. 360 pages, b&w illustrations. No markings.

Hardcover. Boston, Bulfinch Press, 1st US, 1991, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 344 pages, Hardcover with dust jacket. B&w illustrations. Like-new.

Hardcover. US, Fantagraphics Books, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 79 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. A graphic novel of the German artist's life, b&w art by author. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Seattle, Fantagraphics Books, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 79 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. A graphic novel of the German artist's life, b&w art by author. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. NY, William Morrow, 1st, 1971, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 286 pages. "These thirty five selections, almost all autobiographical, portray what it was like to grow up in Africa". Contributors include Leopold Senghor, Kwame Nkrumah, Camara Laye, James Ngugi, Peter Abrahams, David Diop and many more. Map endpapers.

Hardcover. NY, Nesterman Publishing., 1st, 1943, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, maroon cloth stamped in gilt. 263 pages, b/w illustrations by Al Coleman. SIGNED BY BOTH AUTHORS on the front fly leaf. A memoir of growing up on farms in central and western New York before the turn of the century. A hilarious account that recalls all the joys and a few of the mishaps that accompanied Horse and Buggy days on the farm. Clean, tight copy.